had discovered mobility.
From that moment on, Mudshark did everything he could to anticipate their moves and keep them out of trouble. He stood guard between the triplets and electrical outlets (there had been a close call with Tara, a Barbie doll and a surge protector), the dog bowl (Sara was especially fond of kibble) and the cat box (Mudshark made a flying leap across the room the first time he saw Kara sitting next to the litter box, reaching a small hand toward the mysterious clumps she saw. He snatched her up before sheconnected). Yes, he owed his speed and attention to detail to Kara, Sara and Tara.
But the way he moved wasn't why Mudshark was cool.
And it wasn't his clothes. Sometimes his outfit fit in with the way everybody else dressed and sometimes it didn't. Once, he wore a green wool sweater that had a yellow leather diamond stamped with the head of a poodle in the middle of the chest. It was as ugly as broken teeth chewing rotten meat, but by the end of the day everybody in school wished they had a green wool sweater with a yellow leather diamond and a poodle on it, too.
That's how cool Mudshark was.
It didn't matter to Mudshark what they called him or that he wasn't allowed to play Death Ball anymore because of how badly he'd frightened the other players with his fast moves (Death Ball was not known to require cunning or quickness, just the brute force and raw grit necessary to last the four quarters of, as parents and other adults shudderingly referred to it, That Game). Mudshark knew coolwasn't in how you moved or a name or clothes or whether or not you were asked to play on anyone's team.
It was all in the way your thoughts ran through your mind, the way you managed the flow of electrical charges jumping from one brain cell to another to form ideas.
That's what makes somebody who they are. And that's why Mudshark was so cool.
He
thought
.
While everyone else was hanging out or goofing off or playing video games or listening to music or watching TV or walking down the hallway in a funk or texting each other or surfing the Net, he was observing the people and objects and sights and scenes around him.
Thinking.
Once, when he was just five and a half years old, he went up to his mother and said:
“Mom, I think
all
the time.”
“About what?”
“Everything.” Deep breath, let it out, sigh.
“What are you thinking about right now?”
“Fingernails grow exactly four times faster than toenails, but it's not like we need toenails because we don't even use them for scratching and did you know that an octopus doesn't even
have
toenails…” He sighed again, and as he turned to walk away, he said, “It makes a man think.”
He also read all the time. His mother was the lead research coordinator at the public library, and from the time he was very tiny, she'd brought him to work with her, setting him on the floor behind her desk with a stack of books she'd absentmindedly pulled from the nearest shelf—never picture books or easy readers, but books on astronomy and astrophysics and the history of democracy and the rise and fall of ancient civilizations. He'd learned to read before he went to kindergarten and was always carrying two or three books with him. He only had to read a page once to be able to quote from it word for word.
As he grew older, his memory became better because of the way he learned to pay attention to every sight, smell, taste and sound every minute of everyday. As with any skill, practice made him more proficient, and over time, he'd developed a nearly photographic memory.
Eventually people noticed his knack for quoting obscure facts and remembering tiny details, and when a kid at school had a question or problem, someone would say “Ask Mudshark.”
“Hey, Mudshark,” Markie McCorkin said, “I lost my homework!”
And Mudshark remembered him sitting by the steps in front of the school where two small kids had been playing with a ball, a yellow ball, that they'd
From that moment on, Mudshark did everything he could to anticipate their moves and keep them out of trouble. He stood guard between the triplets and electrical outlets (there had been a close call with Tara, a Barbie doll and a surge protector), the dog bowl (Sara was especially fond of kibble) and the cat box (Mudshark made a flying leap across the room the first time he saw Kara sitting next to the litter box, reaching a small hand toward the mysterious clumps she saw. He snatched her up before sheconnected). Yes, he owed his speed and attention to detail to Kara, Sara and Tara.
But the way he moved wasn't why Mudshark was cool.
And it wasn't his clothes. Sometimes his outfit fit in with the way everybody else dressed and sometimes it didn't. Once, he wore a green wool sweater that had a yellow leather diamond stamped with the head of a poodle in the middle of the chest. It was as ugly as broken teeth chewing rotten meat, but by the end of the day everybody in school wished they had a green wool sweater with a yellow leather diamond and a poodle on it, too.
That's how cool Mudshark was.
It didn't matter to Mudshark what they called him or that he wasn't allowed to play Death Ball anymore because of how badly he'd frightened the other players with his fast moves (Death Ball was not known to require cunning or quickness, just the brute force and raw grit necessary to last the four quarters of, as parents and other adults shudderingly referred to it, That Game). Mudshark knew coolwasn't in how you moved or a name or clothes or whether or not you were asked to play on anyone's team.
It was all in the way your thoughts ran through your mind, the way you managed the flow of electrical charges jumping from one brain cell to another to form ideas.
That's what makes somebody who they are. And that's why Mudshark was so cool.
He
thought
.
While everyone else was hanging out or goofing off or playing video games or listening to music or watching TV or walking down the hallway in a funk or texting each other or surfing the Net, he was observing the people and objects and sights and scenes around him.
Thinking.
Once, when he was just five and a half years old, he went up to his mother and said:
“Mom, I think
all
the time.”
“About what?”
“Everything.” Deep breath, let it out, sigh.
“What are you thinking about right now?”
“Fingernails grow exactly four times faster than toenails, but it's not like we need toenails because we don't even use them for scratching and did you know that an octopus doesn't even
have
toenails…” He sighed again, and as he turned to walk away, he said, “It makes a man think.”
He also read all the time. His mother was the lead research coordinator at the public library, and from the time he was very tiny, she'd brought him to work with her, setting him on the floor behind her desk with a stack of books she'd absentmindedly pulled from the nearest shelf—never picture books or easy readers, but books on astronomy and astrophysics and the history of democracy and the rise and fall of ancient civilizations. He'd learned to read before he went to kindergarten and was always carrying two or three books with him. He only had to read a page once to be able to quote from it word for word.
As he grew older, his memory became better because of the way he learned to pay attention to every sight, smell, taste and sound every minute of everyday. As with any skill, practice made him more proficient, and over time, he'd developed a nearly photographic memory.
Eventually people noticed his knack for quoting obscure facts and remembering tiny details, and when a kid at school had a question or problem, someone would say “Ask Mudshark.”
“Hey, Mudshark,” Markie McCorkin said, “I lost my homework!”
And Mudshark remembered him sitting by the steps in front of the school where two small kids had been playing with a ball, a yellow ball, that they'd
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